EXECUTIVE SUMARY
This report has been prepared in response to a brief from Belcher Rollins and proposes a public relations strategy for the international launch of ‘InScope’; a new academic abstracting and indexing tool for libraries, which will be launched in October 2009.
It sets out the market position of Belcher Rollins and the potential impact of InScope, providing context in which to view PR plans and budgets. It also analyses both macro-environmental and internal factors, focusing on the key issues which may impact on the launch: the pace of technological development; the lobby for open access publishing; worldwide economic conditions and shifts in the market for scholarly publishing.
Secondary research has allowed stakeholders to be reviewed and key publics to be identified. This has resulted in clear, achievable campaign objectives and targeted messages, which focus on InScope while underpinning the company’s mission, vision and values. Issues management is proposed alongside the launch campaign, to ensure that industry issues do not detract from a focus on the product.
The recommended strategy is based on a 12-month plan, with three strands of international activity: pre-launch awareness-building; integrated communications focusing on the launch itself and follow-up to maintain momentum.
Activity focuses on the primary publics of librarians and the wider academic community, but considers strong influencing factors from other groups. In order to optimise customer-facing communication, it aims to harness: internal communications; investor relations; lobbying activity and issues management.
At the heart of the campaign are: a series of high profile events in six major cities followed by roadshows and sponsored events; a programme of international media relations; launch of the ‘InScope Challenge’ to celebrate a new generation of researchers and a strong link with financial reporting.
The report concludes by outlining the required resources, potential budgets and evaluation criteria. Recommendations are made on necessary internal structure to manage the multi-national nature of the campaign.
The campaign theme: ‘A New Generation of Research’, draws heavily on stakeholder opinion and product features. Ongoing testing of messages and material with customers will ensure the integrity of this approach.
BACKGROUND TO THE BRIEF
Belcher Rollins, the world’s largest academic publisher, is headquartered in London, England and has 7,000 employees in 25 offices, led by teams in: the US (Washington); Canada (Montreal); Australia (Sydney); New Zealand (Auckland); Japan (Tokyo) and China (Shanghai). It is listed on the London, New York and Tokyo stock exchanges.
. With an annual turnover of £5.5 billion, Belcher Rollins is the market leader.
The company serves over 30 million scientists, academics and information professionals worldwide, and works with global academic communities to publish over 5,000 journals and 1,900 books per year. As with all major academic publishers, around a third of subscriptions are sold in Europe, a third in North America, and the rest elsewhere. Competitors include commercial publishers, learned societies and university presses3.
After two years of development and testing by 20 university libraries, Belcher Rollins will launch its innovative new resource, InScope, in October 2009. This user-friendly search engine is dedicated to finding peer-reviewed, academic research among Belcher Rollins’ publications, back-dated to 1960. This equates to 27 million document entries.
InScope offers competitive advantages over existing resources: citation searching; a catalogue covering all academic fields and potential cross-pollination of different research areas to produce innovative publications. With a competitive annual operating cost of £20,000, InScope provides significant added value compared with other electronic products.
The potential market for InScope is substantial, with the combined number of universities in its geographical markets approaching 10,000. As little as 10 percent market penetration would produce annual returns of £20million, before considering additional revenue from individual article sales and new subscriptions.
Launch plans and budgets should be viewed in the context of the potential impact of InScope on the sector. External analysis reveals estimates of 15 to 25,000 peer-reviewed titles published worldwide, growing by 3-4 percent per year. Sixty percent are published on-line, with10 percent available free via an open access model.
Through InScope, a quarter of the world’s most prestigious academic titles will now be available to researchers in one place.
SITUATION ANALYSIS
Understanding of the external environment stems from an EPISTLE analysis, reviewing seven areas: economic; political; information; social; technological; legal and environmental. This has been informed by secondary research, reviewing activity from competitors (Reed Elsevier, Springer and others), industry bodies and Governmental groups, and media coverage.
Significant issues appear in the table overleaf and are expanded in Appendix II, while a list of competitors can be found in Appendix III. Internal and external factors have also been summarised within a SWOT analysis, developed by reviewing the Belcher Rollins/InScope strategic plan and discussions with company specialists.
